19th October 2023
In an Irish Legal News article, it reports on an event on Wednesday 18 October 2023 where politicians marked the ten-year anniversary of the publication of the Report on Penal Reform of 2013 by the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality at an event in the AV room in Leinster House.
The event by the All-Party Oireachtas Group on Penal Reform, co-chaired by Labour Deputy Ivana Bacik and Fine Gael Deputy Alan Farrell, and supported by the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) invited legislators to reflect on the implementation of the recommendations of the report as well as areas of progress or regress in the penal landscape.
The article highlights that the prison population has gone up in the ten years since the 2013 report that called for one-third reduction.
Saoirse Brady, IPRT Executive Director, said in the piece: “Today’s briefing for legislators is timely given the publication of the Irish Prison Service annual report for 2022.
“Despite a welcome aspiration in 2013 to reduce the prison population by a third, and a restatement of the commitment last year to reduce the prison population, the numbers are going in entirely the wrong direction.
“There has been established cross-party support for more than a decade to reform our prison system, yet overcrowding and poor conditions still prevail. It’s all very well having written policy in place, but it’s the implementation of policy that really matters.
“We need to see clear action and the political will to deliver meaningful change.”
Read the full article here.
Respect for rights in the penal system with prison as a last resort.